


The Longest Ride

by Ace_Of_Fleurons



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Flash Fic, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Game: Resident Evil 3 Remake (2020), I Will Go Down With This Ship, Kinda, Let's Talk About Those Dream Sequences Shall We, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Mild Blood, Post-Canon, Recovery, Romantic Fluff, T-Virus, Their Dynamic Absolutely Wrecked Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23521810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_Of_Fleurons/pseuds/Ace_Of_Fleurons
Summary: Finally, after days of struggling to survive and having their faith being ripped and gifted to them in a seemingly-endless cycle, Jill and Carlos escape the nightmare that is Raccoon City.What awaits them at their destination is another battle. But for now, they take peace in the journey.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Comments: 26
Kudos: 201





	The Longest Ride

“Are you okay, Jill?” Carlos asked again.

The city was gone.

Jill stared at the remains that flew up in the smoke and ashes of the missile launched from hundreds of miles away. The missile launched by government officials who didn’t even know the civilians who were doomed to die. The missile launched because of the sins of the scientists with whom they bardered weapons. Jill clutched the broken vial tighter.

“I dreamed about you,” she murmured, feeling the last of the vaccine leak out of the vial, her voice a soft hum in the roar of the helicopter’s blades.

Carlos leaned back in his seat, trying to see her from his position while piloting. “You what?”

“When you cured me, after you left. I had a dream about you.” Jill rose her head. The city’s flames slowly grew dimmer over the horizon, melting into the sky and becoming indistinguishable with the dawn. Unsure of if she should continue, she paused.

Carlos turned his attention back to driving. “What was I doing there?” he mused, voice somehow playful despite the hell they experienced. “Not gonna lie, supercop, I’m kinda flattered…”

Feeling the warped steel against her fingertips, Jill stared at the vial. “You were infected.”

She felt the helicopter swerve a little—it corrected itself so quickly she half-thought she imagined it.

“You told me the city was safe, but you…” Jill trailed off, catching herself at another sentence. “You asked me to shoot you. You said it was the only way.”

Silence choked the cockpit. Birdsong began to waft through the open doors and cracked windows. It was almost as if the world had already forgotten Raccoon City, and the notion was so tempting, so comforting to their tired bodies—but the undeniable aching in the pair’s bones argued otherwise.

Carlos didn’t look back. “Did you do it?”

Jill took a deep breath of clean air, air that tasted too sweet and too clear to be real. “No,” she breathed, shaking her head. “I couldn’t do it. I…”

She didn’t know the ending to that sentence, didn’t know where it would go. _You looked too human, you sounded too human, you’re my partner, I couldn’t do it because I..._

Jill felt the blood dribble on her hands before she saw it. So tightly she had gripped the twisted vial that the open metal cut open her fingers. She hardly even felt it—honestly, in comparison to how much she had hurt the past few days, it was practically a papercut.

She went to wipe her hand on her arm, but the gauze stopped her. The gauze Carlos wrapped around her arm when she had been infected. Not in a dream, not in her head. He had saved her.

 _And I couldn’t shoot you after you saved me_.

Carlos’ statement almost drowned in the whipping wind and swirling blades. But Jill heard it. “So that’s why you cried.”

Jill whirled herself around in her seat. “I _what_?”

“Back there, with Nicholai. When I told you to shoot us,” Carlos glanced back at Jill, and in his eyes she saw tears of his own, “you cried a little. Like you knew it was coming.”

Jill didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Turning back to the horizon, she found it was empty.

Another wave of silence washed over them, but this time around it felt comforting—almost like the calm after a storm has passed.

Clearing his throat, Carlos asked in a voice loud enough to be heard clearly over the helicopter. “Thanks for doing that, by the way. For shooting me”

Jill glanced back at him, smiling a little despite herself. “Sorry about that. How’re you holding up?”

He gave the area where the bullet hit a little pat—and then immediately grimaced. “Well, I’m still talking, ain’t I? That must be a good sign.”

Jill shook her head, her smile gradually growing into something warmer, more genuine. She stretched her legs out in front of her, feeling her pulse spread through veins tired from so much adrenaline being forced through them. The steady rhythm tempted her, lulling her to sleep.

Carlos’ voice pulled her into reality. “Oh, and stop saying sorry for that. Without you, we’d both be burned to a crisp back there, and Nicholai would’ve jacked our ride.”

Jill murmured a response to which she didn’t know the words. How long had it been since she’d actually, truly slept without the help of sleeping pills, or alcohol, or a virus, or...

“Hey, uh… Jill.”

Jill opened her eyes and turned in her seat, watching as Carlos looked back at her—longer this time.

He smiled. He smiled like in her dream—the same sweet, reassuring smile that told her without any words that they were fine, that everything was going to be alright, that he…

“Thanks. For everything.”

_...that he loves me._

Jill returned his child-like grin, her wounds forgotten. “I should be the one thanking you. If you hadn’t saved me back there, I’d be another one of those shambling corpses getting lost in the street.”

Carlos turned back to the windshield, laughing, throwing a remark over his shoulder. “Hey, you’re supercop!” Jill noticed as his thick, dark curls bounced with his laugh. “You would’ve made it even if I hadn’t somehow stumbled across you. Not even a two-story pile of rotting, talking ground beef could stop you.”

Jill leaned her head back on top of her seat, staring through quickly-dimming vision at the helicopter’s cockpit. “You mean the Nemesis or Nicholai?”

Carlos barked in laughter. He struggled to keep the helicopter on a straight path. “You tell me,” he countered, and his bright grin was the last Jill saw before she drifted into a dreamless sleep.

But before she fell under, feeling the smile naturally and peacefully fade from her lips, she finally found the ending to her first sentence.

_I love you, too._

* * *

Carlos glanced back at Jill, now sleeping, her face turned towards him with that same, peaceful expression as when she was awake. He’d try to keep the ride relatively smooth, but piloting a helicopter wasn’t really the same as driving a car—after all, turbulence wasn’t some pot hole he could avoid. But hey, you couldn’t blame a man for trying.

He glanced out the open cargo door at the sky, the orange and red and yellow tie-dyed clouds breaking over an ocean of blue that almost seemed unreal next to the images of flames and blood still fresh in his mind.

 _But it is real._ His eyes returned to Jill, peacefully asleep and unburdened by any infection or insane parasite stalker. _This_ _is real._

Carlos turned his attention back towards the horizon ahead of him, deciding that he wouldn’t tell her that in her half-conscious, unguarded state she professed her love to him.

No, that would just be too cruel.

**Author's Note:**

> *walks into room, arms overflowing with love for this ship* hello friends i have returned with a new favorite ship
> 
> I finished the Resident Evil 3 Remake/Reimagine (twice), and this ship came unapologetically into my life, broke all my windows, and then curbstomped my face in and I thanked it.
> 
> Full disclosure: I used to be a die-hard ValenField before I played this. However, the game that got me into RE in the first place was the OG RE3, so needless to say Jill x Carlos was my jam before I got deeper into the lore and started shipping ValenField. And then I played this game and it changed my mind so quickly that honestly the whiplash broke my neck.
> 
> I was thinking about how their ride back would be, and it mostly just became fluff. Sometimes it be that way. I also hardly edited this since I just wanted to get it out there, so sorry for any weird writing.
> 
> (Also the in-game dream sequences broke me. Capcom knows how to play with our emotions)


End file.
